Once I Had a Brother

Thinking of my brother.

He would have been seventy-four today.
Instead he never saw fifty.

We grew up cheek by jowl.
Our family was always on the move.
In our formative years we only had each other.

As we grew up I wanted to be a priest.
Christian, Buddhist, that was a matter not as clear
He was cool and wanted to have a good time.
Pot and acid at first.
But his true loves turned out to be alcohol and cocaine
For which he would forsake all others.

All these years later I can see the splatter pattern on the wall behind the couch where he sat. And I wonder what, if anything, was racing through his mind as he fingered the gun.

On the one hand we all die. Dead. Forever.
But there are other hands out there.
And any moment that births into this world exists in one sense,
a most true sense, for ever and ever.

And so my brother. In part for as long as I live. In part in that other place.
He continues to live.

In my dream worlds he’s running a bar near the beach in Belize.
Every day is a walk on the beach.
And every night is a party.

for the last decade or so of his life
Moss Grows Freely

As I knew him growing up
Donald Loren Ford

Requiescat in pace

Rest in Peace